Tibet preserves 4,277 immovable cultural relics

Lhasa (CNS) -- Tibet now has 4,277 immovable cultural relics on record, including historical sites, ancient tombs, historical buildings, grottos, temples and stone carvings, the regional cultural relic authority announced on Tuesday.

One survey, part of the third national cultural relic survey project, was conducted from April of 2007 to June of 2011, and covered 98 percent of the region's total area (excluding only the depopulated zone in northern Tibet). Of all 4,277 sites on record, 3,013 of these cultural treasures were newly found during the long run of the investigation.

In terms of museum holdings, the number of Tibet's treasures has reached into the millions, including scripts, official documents, seals, chinaware, stoneware, pottery, jade, Buddha statues and Thangka.

In 1959, the Ministry of Culture conducted several feature probes in Tibet, but it was not until the 1984-1992 project that Tibet conducted its first general investigation of its rich preserve of immovable cultural relics.